ADCET UDL Symposium: Practical applications of accessible and diverse UDL techniques

Online presentation

RMIT Library Digital Learning is a small, skilled, technical team of digital learning resource specialists who develop new learning resources for a diverse and broad university-wide audience. They are also tasked with managing large collections of legacy resources that require retrofitting accessibility improvements.

The team also acts in an advisory capacity to assist others to create digital media content to the same standards, and to showcase our best-practice examples. Skills and knowledge in the team and the wider Library are retained through our ways of working, documentation practices and information sharing across teams and units.

All new resources that are developed are inclusive by design. In this short presentation they shared their methods and processes for creating quality and engaging digital learning resources that incorporate accessibility and diversity right from the beginning of the development process.

Some of their methods and practices that have proved to be successful include:

Understanding the audience and undertaking detailed research for needs and requirements.
Keeping up to date with developments in the field.
Documenting what is done so it is repeatable and shareable with others (creating a knowledge-base).
Following the principle that successful, accessible websites can also be aesthetically pleasing.
Using different forms of testing and evaluation within and outside of the team.
“Launch before it's ready” – an agile and modular approach to design and development to deliver what we can, when we can and continuously improve. This allows different kinds of users to review their resources, confirming that the concepts are sound, and that implementation is successful.

The presentation covered three examples of recent projects developed by their team (including an award-winning OER) and how they have successfully incorporated UDL techniques to create popular digital learning resources.

Presenter

AJ Penrose (she/her) is a digital storyteller with over 20 years experience in the web/multimedia industry, and a passionate advocate of diversity and accessibility online. AJ enjoys exploring emerging technology and is especially happy while code-sleuthing, illustrating and animating for the Digital Learning, Library team.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aj-penrose-b0067a93